Spectrumecons 7 Week Challenge – Challenge 5: Auction Results

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the results post for Challenge 5: Auction. This post contains a video of an Excel Model, which generates the values of all 12 items that were auctioned in the challenge, the winners of each auctioned item, and the participant who made the highest profit from the auction.

Winner determined in this video

What is the Auction Challenge?

The auction challenge allows participants to bid on up to 6 of 12 items in an auction. The participant who bids the highest wins the value of the auctioned item. However, the values of the auctioned items are not stated in the question. Instead, a range of values are stated. These values are generated using the Excel Model shown in the video in this post. Participants should aim to win the auctioned items without bidding over their values. This will produce a profit. Profit is calculated by subtracting the winning bid from the value of the item. The participant with the highest profit is the winner.

Responses to the challenge are made in the comments section of the challenge post. The account with the winning entry will receive Hive equivalent to 5 times the number of participants (e.g. if challenge has 6 participants the prize will be 30 Hive (5 × 6)). The maximum prize for this challenge is 60 Hive. In addition to the winning prize, the first 12 entries are given upvotes. In addition to the prize in Hive, the winner receives 20 points, second place 10 points, and third place 5 points; these points contribute to determining the overall challenge series winner.

The format of the required entry is explained in detail in the challenge itself.

For a more detailed explanation, you can access the challenge post using the following link.

Other challenges

There are six other challenges in the series. Below are five of them.

• Challenge 1: Buying and Selling Game
• Challenge 2: Game Theory
• Challenge 3: Cost Benefit Analysis
• Challenge 4: Make Me Happy
• Challenge 6: Buying and Selling Game (Business Version)

Results of Challenge 5

Table 1 contains the bids made by all participants and the winners of each auctioned item.

Table 1: Bids and winners of auctions

All 6 participants who entered won at least one auctioned item. @bhattg won 4 items, @tamdike won 3, @rexplanet won 2, and @diebitch, @kevinnag58 and @crrdlx won 1 item each. Winning more items does not necessarily equate to obtaining the highest profit.

Table 2 contains the values of each item (generated by the model) and the profit each participant made on their winning bids. Table 3 contains the overall profit made by each participant.

Table 2: Value of items and profit made from each item

Table 3: Overall Profit made by Participants

Congratulations to @tamdike for winning the Auction Challenge with a profit of 351. @tamdike made profits on all three items won. @tamdike wins 30 Hive for this challenge (5 × 6) and 20 points. @diebitch is awarded 10 points for second place and @crrdlx is awarded 5 points for third place

Below are the challenge series overall scores, so far.

Overall Series Score

Challenge Tips

@tamdike played close to the perfect game. Bidding on items with very few bids greatly increases chances of winning with a lower bid. Winning with a lower bid increases profit for each item won. If all items have many bids, bidding to win on most items is likely to result in overbidding, which will lead to a loss rather than a profit. Under these circumstances, the best chance of winning the game would be to bid on just a few items (possibly just one) that have a very large range in value. The chances of making a loss will be very high but if a profit is made it could be high and still provide a participant with a possible path to victory.

More posts

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.

My CBA Udemy Course

The course contains over 10 hours of video, over 60 downloadable resources, over 40 multiple-choice questions, 2 sample case studies, 1 practice CBA, life time access and a certificate on completion. The course is priced at the Tier 1 price of £20. I believe it is frequently available at half-price.

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